India is the original home of sugarcane and second largest producer next to Brazil. Presently, India produces about 280 million tons of sugarcane in an area of 4 million hectares. About 10-12% is available for the manufacture of sugarcane juice.
It is a well known fact that sugarcanes are crushed to obtain juice and it is a common practice in India to dispense this juice fresh either as such or with the addition of lime juice and/or fresh ginger extract in glasses by the vendors/hawkers to the consumers. The major problem encountered in this operation is the lack of hygiene resulting in contamination of the juice with the heavy load of microorganisms, which arise due to improper cleaning of the sugarcanes and handling of the finished product. Raw sugarcane juice is a carbohydrate rich, low acid food and is therefore susceptible to the growth of yeasts, of spoilage bacteria and also of pathogenic bacteria. Pathogens such as Salmonella, S. aureus, and C, perfringens are able to grow and proliferate at a pH of more than 4.6. Contamination of raw juice by these bacteria can occur by the food handlers, by the equipment used or by the environment in which it is prepared. Such freshly crushed juice cannot be preserved even for a few hours since it is known to ferment very quickly.
Attempts have been made by many to develop a process for preserving the sugarcane juice. Yet there is no knowledge/information regarding its manufacture and sale in any form of packaging material commercially.
Reference may be made to CFTRI process (Shankaranarayana, M. L., Abraham, K. G., and Raghavan, B., CFTRI Annual Report, 1986-87, p 70) wherein the juice was subjected to pasteurization at 70° C. for 10 min. The drawback with the product was browning and formation of off-flavor not acceptable to consumers.
Reference may be made to Mann and Singh (Mann, R. S., and Singh, S., Indian Farming, 37; 15, 1988) wherein the diluted sugarcane juice containing citric acid and salt was pasteurized in order to overcome deleterious effects on the consumers. The drawback of the process was the absence of class II preservatives and low pasteurization temperature, which resulted in quicker spoilage even at refrigerated temperature.
Reference may be made to Bhupinder et al. (Bhupinder, K., Sehgal, V. K, Sekhon, K. S., and Sharma, K., Proc II IFCON, CFTRI, 1988, p. 105) wherein a ready to serve bottled sugarcane juice beverage was developed. The drawback of this process was the absence of citric acid in the beverage and also pasteurization for 10 minutes at 80° C. which is insufficient to preserve the beverage. Also, this is in-pack sterilization and not aseptic unit packs and hence is different from the present invention.
Reference may also be made to Bhupinder et al. (Bhupinder, K., Sharma, K. P., and Harinder, K., Int. J Trop Agric., 9, p. 128, 1991) wherein the above process was slightly modified by addition of potassium metabisulphite (sulphur dioxide 70 ppm) and bottling followed by sterilization for 30 minutes. The drawback with this process was extended pasteurization time, which will result in flavor deterioration.
Reference may be made to another process involving direct heating of the juice to 85° C. for one minute (Sivasubramanian, G. and Pai, J. S., Ind. Food Packer, XLVIII (2), 51, 1994). But the resultant product had an off-flavor on storage.
Among the patents related to sugarcane juice that are available, one relates to a method for preparing a sugarcane juice based fruit juice and a drink containing said juice (L. Fahrasmane and M. Catherine, W02000FR0000765, Oct. 5, 2000/Mar. 27, 2000). The above invention consists of at least one tangential filtration stage for a dry pressed raw sugarcane extract. One more Indian patent has also been filed under the title “Preservation process for improved shelf life of sugarcane juice (pure)” (K. P. Sharma, 184435, Aug. 26, 2000).
It is evident from the above cited literature that there is a need in the industry for flavored sugarcane juice in aseptic unit packs.